Hi Jonathan,

thanks a lot for your detailed feedback!

To be honest, about 10 years ago I had already done it on my old Series II which does not have a truss rod and it worked fine.

Just wanted to know if that could have caused any issues on the neck...

Cheers,
Stefano

Hi Stefano,

I've done that in the past on my wooden neck basses - had zero issues.

It would take a damn sight more more to cause a graphite neck to structurally fail! so be assured the additional tension will not effect it. - at most you may have to do a very minor truss rod adjustment, but considering the original graphite necks didn't even have a truss rod... i'd doubt you will even have to do that!

Few thing to consider:
The size of the nut (you may need to file it down for larger gauge B strings)

How "floppy" the strings are (can lead to fretbuzz etc) - this can be fixed by using higher gauge strings. or a longer scale length of the guitar,
4 string bass guitars tend to be 34 Inches - i know of a few players who custom ordered basses to 35 inches, so the strings are a higher tension thus play lighter gauge strings in the B-E-A-D configuration without having to worry about buzz.

Pretty much all 5 & 6 string basses tend to be 35inch + scale. Slightly off topic but i believe Carl Thompsons 4 string basses are 36inch scale!

Hope that helps,
Jonathan

Ciao,

just wondering if anybody tried to use a low B-string on their 4-string to tune it B-E-A-D...

Do you guys think a Status 4-stringer with a graphite neck trough contruction would suffer from this?

Thanks for any input!

Stefano